The present-day Ohio State University finance professor will be a small-town banker, issuing
gold-backed bank notes in a time before federal currency.

The retired high-school French teacher will be the headmistress of a finishing school, teaching
young ladies the manners needed to secure a proper husband.

The 12-year-old middle schooler will be an apprentice in a print shop, setting type and starting
a career.

Soon the Civil War-era personas will become residents of Ohio Village, the re-created
19th-century town on the grounds of the Ohio History Center. Until then, the students will keep
learning how to accurately depict their counterparts in 1863.

To become “first-person interpreters” at Ohio Village, participants take a six-class course to
develop their characters — an exercise less in imagination than in historical research. They create
detailed life stories and family trees, drawing from records, diaries and other historical
documents.

At the end of the course, a committee votes whether the characters can join the 35 other village
residents, who educate school groups throughout the year and the public from Memorial Day to Labor
Day.

Ohio Village used paid staff members from its opening in 1974 until 2002, when budget cuts
eliminated its public hours. Since reopening in the summer, the village has relied on volunteers,
who purchase their own costumes and inhabit the town for a minimum of 16 hours a month during the
summer.

“The whole idea is to animate history, to make it come alive in such a way that will connect the
past to the present,” said Mike Follin, class instructor and coordinator of interpretive services
for the Ohio Historical Society.

“What we’re not doing is just reciting a bunch of facts. . . . We take it (history) from its
one-dimension form, flat on a page, and give it three dimensions.”

In a recent class, nine participants shared first drafts of their character biographies as
Follin and classmates pointed out opportunities to show greater context. One woman’s Irish
immigrant character, Follin suggested, might have first moved to Columbus’ poor Irish neighborhood,
Flytown, before heading to the more affluent Ohio Village.

Another character, a widow working in a millinery, was asked how much she charged for her
services, where she lived in town and what her husband’s occupation was before he died in the Civil
War.

Lisa Peterson, 41, admitted that she hadn’t gotten that far.

“I forgot about my husband because he’s dead,” she joked, prompting laughter from her
classmates.

Characters must have an educational purpose and an activity to show visitors (because no one had
time to stand around during the Civil War). And they must be based on at least three primary
documents that prove similar people existed in central Ohio.

Lexie Bickell’s character, village headmistress Louise Cavrel LeClerc, was 18 when she married a
teacher twice her age — circumstances derived from a woman who lived in the Ohio town of
Gallipolis.

To research the character, Bickell, 69, pored over the woman’s family history, personal letters,
a curriculum from a Granville finishing school and other documents.

“I’ve learned so much; it’s been hours and hours of reading,” said Bickell, who retired from
teaching French at Hilliard Davidson High School.

“Holding a letter in your hand that was written in 1825 — it’s kind of a thrill to think about
it.”

Although many interpreters are retirees, others are decades younger.

Having visited the village last year, 12-year-old history enthusiast Ely Lombardi wants to
depict an apprentice to his mother, Brooke Hunter-Lombardi, a 2013 printmaker studying to become an
1863 printer.

Haley Vowell was also a child when she became fascinated by the Civil War: Initially an admirer
of the costumes in
Gone With the Wind, the 23-year-old participates in battle re-enactments. To learn more
about life in the era, Vowell will join Ohio Village as a woman running a toy store while her
husband fights in the war.

As she engages young visitors in period games, Vowell hopes to show a contrast to today’s world:
Fun doesn’t have to depend on technology.

Michael Brandl, 48, sees modern parallels with his character, a community-minded banker who,
unlike others in a time of widespread fraud in banks, prioritizes people before profit.

Brandl, who teaches global finance at OSU, considers Ohio Village a microcosm, where the bank
and businesses work together, and residents hire one another for services to make the community
function.

“As an economist, I see that and I love that,” he said. “In 2013, we are probably just as
intertwined and interdependent on each other as we were back in the summer of 1863.”